Members of New Phonograph team Filip Šír and Anthony Allen will be presenting at the IASA 50th annual conference in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Find the conference schedule here.
New Phonograph: Modular technology, workflow, and collaboration
Anthony Allen
The Czech Republic’s New Phonograph project brought audio preservation to the forefront of the nation’s cultural agenda for the first time. Having little in the way of legacy systems to cope with, this has enabled us to focus entirely on what we want our collections to look like in the future, and plan our strategy accordingly. On the technological side of things, we are seeking a modular, extensible workflow framework, which informs our hardware and software investments, while at the managerial level we would like to establish a concrete means for networking with other institutions whose interests resonate with our own, commissioning access to each other’s technological environments on a per-task basis.
The topics will be:
A technological overview of key parts of our workflow, from DIY to off-the-shelf, and how we are striving for long-life solutions.
A focus on the Endpoint Cylinder Transfer Machine, its role within the context of the project (encompassing research outcomes as well as document digitisation), selection criteria, why we favoured extensibility.
Where we are now: with the first Endpoint in Europe, and few options for Central and Eastern European states to access cylinder digitisation, we would welcome collaboration and a reciprocal environment for sharing access to such technologies where possible, facilitated by a simple platform for registering resources and making requests.
How we intend to proceed in encouraging more open cross-collaboration in Europe, beginning with neighbours, aiming to create more accessible handbooks, toolkits, contacts and other informative resources available at a continental level.